The first round of the 2026 French local elections (élections municipales) took place on Sunday, 15 March and the second round on Sunday, 22 March. Maéra Laffont breaks down everything that has happened.
General knowledge on local elections:
Local elections in France determine the members of the municipal council (conseillers municipaux) that rules each town (commune). Candidates are elected by direct universal suffrage for a 6-year mandate. The electoral system is a proportional representation system based on party lists with gender parity and two rounds. A party list is a group of political candidates, formed by one party or a coalition of parties, running together as a team, meaning that voters vote for a grouping of candidates rather than an individual.
In the first round, if a list gets the absolute majority of the ballots cast, it benefits from the majority premium, which means it receives a number of seats that equals half of the seats to be filled. The rest of the seats are shared on a proportional basis based on the highest average between all the lists that secured more than 5% of the ballots cast.
A second round is organized if no list has obtained the absolute majority of the votes on the first round. To qualify, lists must achieve at least 10% of the votes. In the second round, the majority premium is granted to the list that receives the most votes.
1st round of the 2026 local elections:
For the 2026 local elections, only one list was on the ballot in 68% of the towns i.e. only one round was organized. No minimum number of voters are required for the local elections. The first round saw a historically low turnout. By 8pm the participation was 57.2%, compared to 63.5% in 2014. 2020 saw a particularly low participation rate of 44.6% in local elections, however this was due to the ongoing pandemic at the time, not necessarily voter apathy. Out of the 35,000 communes in France, around 33,000 appointed a list from the first round, which represents around 43 million French citizens.
Right after the initial results, and during the week between the two rounds, candidates and parties decide whether to give instructions to citizens on voting strategies to ensure the success of their party or themselves. At the national and/or local levels, strategies are drawn up by parties and candidates to maintain or withdraw fellow candidates that qualified for the second round. These strategies are often called front républicain (republican coalition), as they aim at creating a barrier against said anti-republican parties, meaning against far-right parties, and increasingly against La France Insoumise. The latter is also using the term front anti-fasciste (anti-fascist coalition) for this strategy.
“These strategies are often called front républicain (republican coalition), as they aim at creating a barrier against said anti-republican parties, meaning against far-right parties, and increasingly against La France Insoumise.”
The Socialist Party’s (Le Parti Socialiste) First Secretary, Olivier Faure, claimed after the first rounds’ results that there will not be any national agreement between La France Insoumise (LFI; "Unbowed France", "Unsubmissive France", or "Rebellious France") and the Socialist Party for the second round. He therefore left the decision to be taken by the lists at the local level.
Jordan Bardella, president of the far-right party National Rally (RN; Rassemblement National), reported that no RN list that had qualified for the second round would be withdrawn. In the towns with no qualified RN list, he called to vote for the right-wing lists to prevent LFI’s lists from winning. On Sunday 22 March, the coordinator of LFI, Manuel Bompard, called for the constitution of an antifascist coalition. Bruno Retailleau, president of the centre right, Les Républicains (The Republicans), called for the large gathering of the right against both the left and RN.
Alliances, merges and withdrawals were more common between socialists, ecologists and unsubmissives but also took place between the right and the far-right. Le Monde newspaper counts 383 merges and 437 withdrawals amongst the 5,097 lists qualified. Nevertheless, it remains that 803 trios, 157 quads and 16 quintets formed for the second turn organized across some 1,500 municipalities
2nd round and results:
The second round witnessed a participation of 57.9% by 8pm on Sunday 22 March (41.0% in 2020; 62.1% in 2014). The results do not show a breakthrough from any particular political force, although the right-wing party, Les Républicains claims the position as being the first local political force (since 2014). Clermont Ferrand, Brest, Cherbourg are won by the right. Brice Teinturier, political analyst and deputy managing director of the polling organisation Ipsos, describes the right as being the right of the SMEs rather than of the CAC40, as it performs better in middle-sized towns than in metropoles and larger towns.
The Socialist Party maintains its political ruling in Paris, Lyon and Marseille, the third biggest municipalities, as well as in Nantes, Montpellier, Rennes, Lille, Villeurbane and Dijon. The Socialists perform well in the largest French towns that concentrate high-educated people and public service workers. They gain Strasbourg, formerly a stronghold for Les Ecologistes, and Saint Etienne, who previously leaned right-wing. On the other hand, they lose Bordeaux, Tulle, Brest, Clermont Ferrand and the metropole of Lyon.
RN is on an upward slope. The number of municipalities they won augments in comparison to 2014 and 2020, in small and medium-sized towns located in rural and increasingly urban areas. They won more towns than LFI. Some experts argue RN may be reaching a glass ceiling however in the biggest towns. Such was the case in Marseille, where the LFI list, in the absence of an agreement with the socialist list, withdrew to explicitly block the RN, resulting in the defeat of the far-right party with a gap of 14 points.
LFI, like RN, faces a glass ceiling in the largest towns except in Roubaix and Saint-Denis (elected from the first round). It conquers middle-sized towns among the working-class that is ill-represented by the Socialist Party. It also performs well amongst high-educated youth.
Emmanuel Macron’s centrist party, Renaissance, maintains in Annecy and gains Bordeaux but loses Pau and Amiens. It faces little local presence.
Les Ecologistes is facing a backlash with the loss of Bordeaux, Strasbourg, Besançon and Poitiers. It maintains in Lyon with the Socialist Party, and Grenoble (but loses the Lyon metropole). Multiple inputs can explain this reflux: disagreements of inhabitants towards town management by the ecologist lists; unfavourable alliances with LFI who was recently qualified as a far-left party by the Conseil d’Etat (Council of State; the highest court in the French administrative hierarchy), and the object of controversies linked with Jean-Luc Mélenchon; as well as the decrease of environmental action and concerns in comparison to 2020.
Conservative newspapers in France and around the world explain that alliances of the Socialists (and the Ecologists) with LFI drove away voters. It can be interpreted that way in Toulouse, where the list uniting LFI and the Socialist Party performed less united in the second turn (46%) than apart for the first turn (28% and 25% respectively), letting the right-wing incumbent mayor take the win with 54% of the votes.
The same happened in Limoges, Brest or Clermont-Ferrand, towns traditionally to the left. On the contrary, where the Socialists decided not to pair with LFI, like in Paris and Marseille, it won. Other analysts nuance those conclusions, recalling the specificities of local elections compared to national: stronger effect of voters’ desire for change, importance of the local stakes and of the outcomes of the precedent mandate, number of mandates done by the incumbent mayor.
In the wake of these elections, no potential leader or candidate emerges from the left for the 2027 presidential election, and in fact, the French left appears more divided than ever. Whereas to the right, figures like Edouard Phillipe (Horizons) or Bruno Retailleau (Les Républicains) have started to establish themselves as serious candidates.
“In the wake of these elections, no potential leader or candidate emerges from the left for the 2027 presidential election, and in fact, the French left appears more divided than ever”
Additionally, some left to far-left media show appreciation that candidates subject to judicial proceedings did not win the elections. It is the case of Rachida Dati, defeated candidate for Paris office even with the alliance with Renaissance and the withdrawal of the far-right candidate. Re-elected mayor of the 7th arrondissement of Paris, she will be judged in September 2026 for corruption and passive influence-peddling and currently is the subject of several ongoing investigations.
Similarly, François Bayrou, incumbent mayor in Pau, is due to stand trial on appeal in September 2026 in connection with the case of Modem’s European parliamentary assistants. His reputation was also tarnished by the Bhétarram Affair in 2025.
To conclude, the national significance of local elections for French politics is certain in the largest towns. Though the voting system is different, they symbolize a popularity test for aspirants to the presidential office, who notably must have a good local implantation to obtain the 500 signatures that are necessary to campaign. These local elections are a health check-up for the parties.
Local elections enable parties to test potential alliances and review voters’ behaviours towards those strategies. The 2026 local elections confirm a strong fragmentation of the French political landscape and the progression of the far-right, trends that were observed at the latest legislative elections in June 2024.
However, in the vast majority of towns, non-partisan candidates are elected. Without the backing of a political party, these individuals face strong difficulties in their roles: administrative burdens, lack of recognition from the state, cutbacks, citizens’ expectations that are difficult to meet, and an overall negative impact on their personal lives.